


Sitting in a tin can

by jekyll_inside



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, M/M, bitter charles, gotta love some chess symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-05-27
Packaged: 2018-01-26 18:19:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1697984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jekyll_inside/pseuds/jekyll_inside
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tiny one-shot scene from the plane ride to Washington, in which Erik realises Charles really isn't the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sitting in a tin can

**Author's Note:**

> oh gosh, hello. first upload, although not my first bit of writing. i've written tons of First Class stuff and i wanted to have these two talk a little about the beach divorce. hope you like it ^_^

Erik looked over the man opposite, his old friend, trying to see every change. His beard and hair weren't the only differences. The professor sat with a broken resentment and hard anger in his eyes that Erik had seen in crippled veterans, the air around him acidic. It was the look shared by every man that had seen a war and lost. His eyes – those eyes – were void of the wit and compassion, the unending optimism, that Erik had come to know Charles by.

“Your move.”

Charles wanted Erik to stop looking at him with that undefinable expression. For a brief moment grey met dull blue, then the German leant forward and moved his knight, the dimmed lights of the plane cabin sliding over the dark mahogany. Charles watched the long fingers lift the piece, then let it go. Thought of how those hands had first felt on him.

_I don’t think I’ll ever want to stop this, Erik._

There’d been laughter and smiling and shared secret glances because he thought he’d been in love. Charles’ lip curled sardonically at the idea, but the expression became more pained as he leant forward to move his bishop, thanks to the deep ache in his spine.

“I have painkillers,” Erik murmured, having been watching his face enough to see the tell. “Strong ones.”

“I think you've done enough, Erik.”

Ten years since he’d said that name last. Charles had missed the feel of the word almost as much as Erik had missed the sound of it. A decade of confined imaginings hadn't done that voice justice.

“Check.”

Charles looked back at the board. His king was safely shielded by his bishop.

“How is that check?” he murmured.

“’I think you've done enough’?” Erik repeated, with a smirk that didn’t reach his eyes. “Let’s not be childish, Professor.”

Hot rage raised its head in Charles’ chest, and he tried to think of a reply that would hurt just as much. Erik had taken away his sister, his legs, his love. How dare he try to move on from that?

“I tried to help you. I loved you,” he eventually said, quietly.

Erik opened his mouth to reply, but the professor continued, his eyes like knives on him. “I trusted you with everything I had, and you left me a… paralysed _mess_ that hates the sound of his own thoughts. So Erik. _Darling_. I think you’ve done enough.”

For a rare moment Erik was stumped, more by the transformation than the words themselves. He willed some laughter to return to those cold blue eyes. 

Westchester sunlight on that face, pebbles crunching underfoot, a hand in the crook of his elbow.

“I meant it, Charles,” Erik replied finally. “When I said that I loved you. I never lied about that.”

A bitter grin, unnatural on Charles’ lips as he cast his gaze out of the plane window. “Well then Erik, our definitions of love must be very different.”

“They’re not,” he replied immediately. “They’re not, Charles, I-”

“You literally shot me in the back, my friend.” 

The cold, even words made Erik fall silent. He stared at the Professor’s resigned and now calm expression, and the Professor stared out at the passing clouds. “You shot me and you left me,” he murmured, bringing a hand up to absently-mindedly massage his temple as a headache began to throb. “I’ve moved on from us.”

Erik’s chest tightened. He wanted to tell him that he loved him still, to apologise, to beg for another chance, but that wasn’t what he did. Erik Lensherr didn't beg for anything.

“You had Moira. And Hank, and Alex, and Sean. You weren’t alone.”

Charles smiled. It was a real smile, however small, and when he looked back at Erik the older man thought he saw something close to gentle there. “Love isn’t the same as friendship, Erik, surely you know that.”

“But…” His voice faded. Erik had never had as many friends as Charles had had with him on the beach in Cuba. Surely that had been enough to make him happy? Yes, what they’d had had been like nothing else _Erik_ had ever experienced, but Charles was everything he wasn’t.  Popular, rich, brilliant. Erik only knew how to kill and survive. 

He looked down at his hands wordlessly. He felt the mangled bullet drop into his palm, remembered the small circle of Charles’ blood it had left on his skin. 

“I can’t decide if I want to hear your thoughts, or am glad that I can’t.” 

Erik looked up. Charles’ blue eyes were studying him quietly, his head resting on his fingers in a way that would have allowed his telepathy in the past. 

_Can you hear me?_ Erik tried, projecting the thought as ‘loudly’ as he could.  But Charles didn’t react. No soft voice filled his mind and calmed him. His head felt like an empty room. Like his plastic cell under the Pentagon.


End file.
